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Curved Elevations???

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone knew a trick on how to do a curved sections/elevation? We have a building has a huge amount of curtain wall that is curved and we wondering if we could do a dead on elevation of each panel of glass for say. I have looked through the forums and didn’t find anything but maybe I am searching for the wrong thing. Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Curved Elevations???

Sorry to say, but there is no way to create a curved elevation at the moment.
It's unlikely to happen anytime in the near future, either.

The Revit philosophy is to give you real-world views & a Curved elevation is "cheating". What do you do with the back side of the wall? If it's not perpendicular to the curve, which part of it do you draw?

The only thing I can think of that would approximate what you want is to place a bunch of elevations perpendicular to each Curtain Wall panel (because, you really want it segmented, not curved, right?) and then composite the separate elevations on a sheet. They should snap into place vertically , but you'll have to eyeball them horizontally.

Re: Curved Elevations???

I am pretty sure you have a single curtain wall segmented, so the elevation mark won't react to each segment like it does with a linear wall....

I haven't done this in a long while, but am pretty sure that the elevation will react to reference planes.

If they do, place reference planes on each segment, you can align, or pick the edge of the mullion for each segment...then create an elevation for each segment....line up all these elevation next to each other, dimension and note at will...

it is a process to go through, not quick and easy, and I would question the real need for the contractor to get that information as true elevation, nonetheless....the process will be longer than usual, but not too extreme...hours not seconds or minutes...

In case the need of a true elevation of a curved wall is something that you need to argue, the only thing that the elevation shows are heights, not planar dimensions, so all you need is a top and bottom of each horizontal member on your elevation, you don't need the full/true elevation to do that.

Take care,

Originally Posted by independentdrafting

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone knew a trick on how to do a curved sections/elevation? We have a building has a huge amount of curtain wall that is curved and we wondering if we could do a dead on elevation of each panel of glass for say. I have looked through the forums and didn’t find anything but maybe I am searching for the wrong thing. Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Curved Elevations???

Well thanks guys for all the help. I knew there wouldnt be a simple answer for this in which it was also explained to the client as well. But thank you again for your insight towards this puzzling question.

Re: Curved Elevations???

Matthew,
sounds like a job for your glazing contractor
If you really need to do this I believe there are a number of AutoCAD third party apps that will do this. They were created for the sheeet metal industry I think. Not sure if they can be applied to curtain systems but it might be worth investigating.
So, an export to ACAD and then a quick run through so you can re-import into your Revit file as a DWG.

Re: Curved Elevations???

While I think it would be possible to write software for producing an unfolded elevation, I think the best thing to do in the case of elevating a curved curtainwall is to either show each planar panel separately (as discussed) or what we did on one occasion: Draft using drafting lines! We produced a single-line diagram to illustrate the structure of the curtainwall, without showing thickness of mullion or anything else.

Re: Curved Elevations???

My current project which is under construction has long runs of compound curves of curtainwall and I documented it by having curtainwall plans which deal with all of the horizontal dimensions and the the vertical dimensions are done in section and true elevation views.

Re: Curved Elevations???

...Draft using drafting lines! We produced a single-line diagram to illustrate the structure of the curtainwall, without showing thickness of mullion or anything else.

I wouldnt want to be monitoring the budget on a project that did that, if the entire radius of that wall has to change at some point. It certainly wont be BIM like, and it might just detroy your budget.